Cutting's Edge contains nearly random Project Management insights from author and speaker Thomas Cutting, PMP. This is the place to go for lessons learned and real world practicality delivered with a twist of humor. Thomas has spoken at PMI and PSQT Conferences and is a regular contributor to ProjectManagementLearningCenter.com. Links to his Computerworld and InformIT.com articles appear under the "See Also..." section below. For booking information contact him at Thomas@CuttingsEdge.com.

Friday, February 23, 2007

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The first step in developing a deliverable-based project schedule is to determine what those deliverables are. One tool used to do this is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Work Breakdown Structure. The WBS is a planning tool that documents the breakdown of the project into deliverables. The is accomplished by taking the ultimate product of the project and breaking it into smaller, more manageable pieces until you have identified all the building blocks of the project. If that project were to create a new home page, the final deliverable would be the completed page. Simplistically speaking, the development process could be divided into parts that included Layout, Column 1 and Column 2 with each of the columns further defined as illustrated in the picture below.

Get the team involved in this exercise. As the project manager, you should facilitate and document these brainstorming sessions. The key is to know when to stop drilling. One indication is based on the fact that deliverables are nouns. If you start listing verbs you are at the activity and task level and should stop. There may be a couple of key tasks you want to jot down as a reminder but you aren’t looking to detail the tasks at this point.

There are multiple ways to capture this information. Initially the diagram method works well for a whiteboard session. Using a spreadsheet or document works, too. Although it may seem logical to use a project-scheduling tool it may be premature. The tool will prompt you for more information on each piece and distract you from getting the team’s ideas out.

From our example the deliverables identified were the Design, Format, Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each of these can be defined and handed to an individual or team to create.

2 comments:

So Tom -the idea of using nouns for deliverables sounds good. Please supply some examples. I am struggling with the deliverable based WBS and seem to always end up with tasks (Actions) vs. deliverables (things)

Some PMs use MS Project or other scheduling applications as a checklist of action items instead of a planning tool.

In a Phased Based SDLC, use the main item(s) of the phase as the Deliverable. For Initiation it would be the Charter. The Requirements Phase may have 3: Business, Functional and Non-Functional Requirements. Construction could be broken down into the individual modules or iterations.

If you are working from a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Delerables are that cut off above where you switch to verbs. Or, if you have "Create X", then X is the Deliverable.

You may end up with several tasks that don't appear to belong to a specific Deliverable. Verify that they are part of your scope. If so, consider them part of the process to generate the deliverable. Example: Meeting with the Architect Review Board during Initiation.

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Thomas Cutting's mission is to raise your expectations of project management through supporting your company's efforts to:
• Establish an Enterprise PMO
• Assess and Increase Process Maturity
• Develop Effective Processes
• Deliver Projects successfully
He is currently doing this for C3G (www.C3G.com).
Prior experiences found him in the entertainment, retail, health insurance, banking, healthcare and automotive verticals. Managing, training, mentoring and working in this diverse background provides him with the basis for his writing and speaking engagements...
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